


The Empty Frame

by Sarah531



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 23:16:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1620479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah531/pseuds/Sarah531
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Wilson, one of Fury's few remaining good men, is sent to Ravencroft to speak to Harry Osborn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Empty Frame

Ravencroft was cold, very cold, the sort of cold that seeped right into your bones. Sam Wilson stood in the entrance hall, blasting a Kanye West song through his mobile phone as an act of mild defiance. He had been kept waiting for an hour.

"I need a man to do an important job," Nick Fury had said. He and Sam had met in a small diner in the middle of nowhere . "I need the best man I’ve got."

"With all due respect, sir," Sam had said, meaning it wholeheartedly, "you haven’t _got_ me.”

Fury had never once taken ‘no’ for an answer, not in the year Sam Wilson had known him. He had handed Sam a file.

"Peter Parker. Spider-Man."

"I know him. Well, know of him."

Another file. “Harry Osborn. Norman Osborn’s only son, Peter Parker’s childhood friend. Injected himself with some untested shit and turned - wait for it - into a green rage monster.”

"Then this sounds like _Bruce Banner’s_ kinda thing.”

"I don’t want _two_ green rage monsters within fifty miles of each other. Bruce understands. You’re a therapist. You’re the listening type. I want you to go see Harry Osborn, and tell me how much of a threat he poses.”

It had been an hour and a half. There were faint screams on the air, echoing down the corridor, and the music couldn’t block them out. Sam had not entered the building alone, but he was alone now.

A woman was coming nearer. “Mr Osborn will see you now,” she said nervously.

"No," said Sam, " _I’ll_ see _him_.”

*

Harry Osborn was sitting on his bed, looking at nothing, a faint smile on his face. The door to his cell slammed behind them both, a loud noise like a gunshot.

Sam was unarmed. He had had to hand his mobile phone over, and he’d been allowed to keep only one thing, an old tape recorder. Since the dissolution of SHIELD, they had all fallen back on less-than-modern technology.

"Harry," he said to the boy. "I’m Sam Wilson. I’m here to talk to you."

"Most people call me Mr Osborn," Harry said casually. "Everyone does. Everyone except my friend Peter, and look what happened to him."

“ _Harry_ ,” said Sam. “There are three soldiers, highly trained agents, watching us through the ceiling. If you make a move on me, they will kill you. Not stun you, not neutralise you, not injure you. Kill you.”

"Well, Sam Wilson." Harry’s mouth folded into a toothy grin, "In that case, you just might be the smartest person to ever walk in here."

*

Harry couldn’t stop moving his hands. They flexed, they tapped, the fingers bounced, the bones cracked.

Sam looked around the room. Harry had grown up the son of a billionaire, this couldn’t be what he was used to. There were no luxuries in this room. There was only one thing of real note: a glass photo frame, empty.

"Do they tell you I’m crazy?" Harry asked.

"They tell me you’re ill," Sam said. "They tell me that, like many ill people, you will probably be used by others for their own ends."

"I’m not ill," Harry said. "Not any more." He spread his arms and fingers. "I’m better than I’ve ever been."

"You are lying to yourself. And you know you are." But perhaps he didn’t. Sam watched as Harry drummed his fingers on the metal bedpost, again and again and again. His nails were long, like claws. No-one in Ravencroft was allowed nail clippers.

"You’ll know," Harry said to him. "What happened to Max?"

The name Max Dillon had shown up in the files. He was dead. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

"Spider-Man killed him, didn’t he?" Harry laughed, but it was a slow, bitter laugh. "He should be in here with me."

Sam wondered if he meant Peter or Max. He watched as Harry went to the little glass photoframe, picked it up as if expecting to see something, and put it back down.

"You were instrumental in the death of a young woman," Sam told him. "Do you know what that means?"

At that, Harry whirled around, and Sam almost jumped. (He was a bit annoyed at that. An untrained teenage boy, with three guns pointing at him, was nothing approaching a real threat.)

"I _didn’t_!” Harry snarled.

"She is dead because of you," Sam said. "Peter Parker’s girlfriend. Gwen. You want to hear about her?"

"Why would I want to _hear_ about her, I didn’t _kill_ her!”

"So who did?"

"Spider-Man did!" Harry screamed, his hands shaking violently. "It wasn’t me! It was Spider-Man, it was Peter, it was my father, _it wasn’t me_!”

Sam prepared for an attack, but it didn’t come. Harry spun around and threw up in the sink. Sam averted his eyes as he cleaned himself up. Everything that’d come out was green.

"I’m not done yet," he said to Harry’s back. "It wasn’t your father, Harry. Your father is dead."

"Oh no," Harry whispered. "He isn’t."

Sam glanced at the little red light on the tape recorder. It was still blinking. He wondered what the men in the ceiling were doing, if their fingers were starting to tighten on the triggers.

"He is, Harry. Norman Osborn died over a year ago. But tell me about him."

There was a long pause. Sam thought about how awful it would be to live the rest of your life in this little room, never seeing the sky, never tasting fresh air.

"He was a _monster_ ,” Harry said, wiping his mouth. The words came out as a sort of gargle: half monsterous snarl, half terrified whimper.

"Why?"

"He was a monster! He sent me away and he backstabbed people and he was drunk and violent and cruel and he _killed my mother_!”

Sam hadn’t expected that, but he didn’t have to wait for an explanation. “He drove her to alcohol and then to drugs. Harder and harder stuff. I was _four_ when I found her unconscious! _Four_! And my dad got someone to take her to hospital, and she _died_ there and he didn’t let me see her!” Harry picked up the empty photo frame. “ _He didn’t let me see her_!” And he flung it into the mirror. Both things shattered instantly, glass rained down all around, but nobody fired a gun.

"Peter didn’t know. He’d have helped me if he did." Harry said. Those words, vitally important, hung in the silence.

Still no-one fired a gun.

"I’m not going to say ‘I’m sorry’," Sam told him. "That’s not why I’m here."

"I didn’t think you would. Why would you?" Harry mumbled.

"I’m not here to help you and I’m not here to hurt you. I came here to find out the answer to one question: are you a monster, or are you a man?"

To prompt Harry into answering, Sam stood up. He was much taller than the boy. He had been when he had entered, but he was even more now. Harry was in a sort of seated foetal position, curled up in himself.

"I’m not a monster, _nor man_.” There was a shard of glass near him, sharp and shiny as a blade. Harry picked it up, stared at his reflection, and threw it away.

Sam nodded slowly. “Well. Guess that’s all I need for now.” The boy did nothing. “I’ll be seeing you, Harry,” he said, and he picked up the tape recorder, and didn’t turn it off, and headed for the door.

"Please kill me," came a strangled voice from behind him.

Sam turned around. Harry was in the same position, his head buried in his hands, barely moving.

"Please. I can’t do this. I think I did kill her. I can’t be my father, don’t make me be my father, you’ve got snipers up there so _tell them to kill me_!”

"I’m not here to hurt you," Sam said gently. "And I’m not here to help you." He opened the door, as quickly as he could, and walked out.

*

It took almost an hour to get back outside. He had to get his things back, and Fury’s agents had to be dismissed, and after all that it was almost as cold in the fresh air as it had been in Ravencroft.

There was a boy outside, a little way away from the guarded gates, wearing nothing to protect him from the weather but not appearing to notice or care. Sam approached him, again completely unarmed.

"Hello, Spider-Man," he said to Peter Parker. "I’m Sam Wilson. Or you can call me Falcon." This marked the first time he had introduced himelf to a stranger by his codename. Peter flinched, at first.

"Hello," he said eventually. "You’re Captain America’s friend, aren’t you?"

"Yeah. And I’m the therapist Nick Fury sent to talk to Harry Osborn. And… _you_ shouldn’t be here, kid. He killed your girlfriend.”

"I know he did," Peter said. "I want to know if _Harry_ did.”

Sam thought about it for a while. “I’m not the psychologist he needs. I don’t know. Part of him’s denying he did anything, part of him seems to think he’s his father-” He looked at Peter’s awful, tired face. “And part of him knows. He asked me to kill him. If you ever see him again, he’ll ask you. I’m pretty sure he will.”

"I can’t kill him," said Peter dully.

"I know, kid. I know."

"Gwen wouldn’t want me to."

Sam had seen Gwen’s picture in the newspaper. He had heard she was pretty, but in the picture he’d seen - a random Facebook selfie - she hadn’t looked _pretty_. Hair too tangled, cheeks too red, spot on her chin, bra strap showing - she hadn’t looked pretty. She’d looked like she was thinking hard about the future, looked happy, looked full of life, looked utterly beautiful. And now she was dead.

"No," he said. "She wouldn’t. Go home, son." He didn’t call people ‘son’ often, it was something he’d picked up from Steve.

Peter started moving. He turned his back on Ravencroft, and also on Sam, and walked. Sam started walking with him.

"Nick Fury’s keeping an eye on you," he told him, and handed him a small card. "If you want anything - well, if you _need_ anything - call that number.”

"Where was Nick Fury when Gwen died? Or her father? Where were you then?"

Sam ignored those words. He had heard them countless times, from countless people, and they couldn’t be responded to.

"I have some stuff I’ve been instructed to tell you, if I saw you. Currently the world thinks Harry Osborn took a drug overdose and is now deep in rehab, but you know better. People who have even more power than he had, they’d gonna want him. And you _will_ see him again, so you need to be certain of what to do.”

"For a long time when I was little he was the only person," Peter said brokenly. "Apart from my aunt and uncle. The _only person_.”

Sam thought of Steve. He thought about a lot of things, but mostly Steve, and what had happened to him. “There are some people you save, and some people you stop. But there’re some who’re both. There have to be.”

Peter looked up at him, and there were a million questions in his eyes, but he didn’t ask any of them. “I have to go,” he said adruptly. “It was nice to meet you.”

Sam just nodded, and within seconds Peter had raced down an alley and disappeared, perhaps up a wall or perhaps into the air, he didn’t know. Sam stepped into the alleyway too. There was only a slight breeze left in Peter's wake, and something else, a piece of paper settling to the ground. Peter had either dropped it when putting Fury's card in his pocket, or he'd thrown it away on purpose. Sam picked it up.

He thought he could guess what it was, and he was right: it was a photograph of two happy young boys, nine or maybe ten. Scrawled on the back: _Two copies of this. You can have this one. Leaving tomorrow. But here if you need me. Love, Harry_

Sam thought he knew what had once been in the broken glass frame. He folded up the photograph and put it in his pocket. _Some who are both_ , he thought, _some who are both_ , and he clung hard to that thought as he walked away.


End file.
